Easter, Anxiety & the Great Jellybean Meltdown: A Holiday Survival Story

Let’s talk about Easter. That pastel-drenched, chocolate-filled, bunny-hopping holiday where we pretend everything is joyous and effortless, while silently melting down inside like a chocolate egg left in the sun.

If you're an anxious person (hi, welcome to the club, we have snacks, but they’re definitely gluten free, dairy free and stress baked), the holidays can feel like emotional marathons in pastel clothing. Easter in particular brings its own unique flavor of pressure: homemade cinnamon coffee cake or traditional hot cross buns. The “right” shade of table napkins, and don’t even get me started on the pressure to make Pinterest worthy Easter baskets that look like Martha Stewart herself curated.

And if you're a mom with anxiety? Hoooo boy.

The internal monologue sounds something like this:

“Are the eggs organic? Are they cage-free? Can I even afford them this year? Why is my living room sticky? Did I traumatize my kids by forgetting to fill the plastic eggs with random joy?? OH MY GOSH I FORGOT TO IRON (who am I kidding, I don't iron) THE PETER RABBIT TABLE RUNNER.”

The truth is, holidays ask a lot of us. Especially those of us who are already running on a thin thread of “just trying to be okay.” We want to show up. We want to make magic. We want to be the mom (or friend or partner) who nails it. But that pull to be perfect? It’s exhausting.

We’re bending ourselves into human balloon animals just to make sure the day is beautiful, the kids are happy, and that Great Aunt So-In-So doesn’t passive aggressively comment on the fact that your deviled eggs didn’t have paprika this year. I am personally trying to avoid this by making a deviled egg dip as an alternative. I'm probably setting myself up for bigger failure.

Why do we do this to ourselves?

Honestly? Love. And pressure. And social media. Instagram has given us a false sense of what holidays should look like. Everyone's smiling. Everyone's wearing linen. No one is crying in the bathroom clutching a rogue jellybean whispering, “I can’t do this again next year.”

We compare our messy, raw, beautiful real lives to someone else’s highlight reel, and then we feel like we’ve failed.

But here's a wild idea: what if the most perfect Easter is the imperfect one?

What if it’s the one where the chocolate bunnies are half melted but your kid’s face lights up anyway? The one where the table isn’t fancy, but the laughter is real? What if the memory your children carry isn’t how good the cookies looked but how safe and loved they felt, running barefoot in the grass (if it will stay warm here in Michigan) with sticky hands and full bellies? What if we show up and be present with our families and friends instead of crying in the bathroom clutching those jellybeans.

Putting yourself out there, showing up for family, organizing get togethers, saying yes when your anxiety is screaming no, takes bravery. It takes emotional labor that no one sees. And sometimes it takes recovery days. (Pro tip: Schedule a nothing day after the holiday. Pajamas mandatory.)

So if you're reading this after Easter with a heart full of love and a body that feels like it’s been hit by an emotional freight train, you’re not alone. You’re not failing. You’re just a beautifully average human doing your best, and that’s more than enough.

Easter, or any holiday really, let’s try something radical: Let’s drop the perfection. Let’s post the messy photos. Let’s laugh when the ham burns, or when the teenager sneakily adds a raw egg to the bowl of perfectly decorated boiled ones. Let’s smile when the chocolate eggs mysteriously disappear and are replaced by a handful of squishy grapes. Let’s embrace it when the toddler flat out refuses to wear pants and proudly runs through the yard like it's their own personal runway. Let’s let "good enough" be actually great!

Because at the end of the day, the only thing our people really want is us, our real, sometimes anxious, deeply loving, big-hearted selves.

And maybe a chocolate bunny (dairy free of course). But like, it doesn’t have to be organic.